Pseudo solution to pseudoephedrine problem

I am not going to repeat what I have said previously about making pseudoephedrine prescription only here and here. And I am not going to start on about rabid authoritarianism and the slow but sure curtailing of freedoms rightly exercised by productive and harmless individuals.

The model is Oregon so best just go there and read what the results have been after 4 years. Mixed and not easy to measure.

The following are excerpts from two columns from Oregon Public Broadcasting News which are from Tuesday and Wednesday this week;

Oregon became the talk of the West Coast for making pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient for illegal meth, a prescription drug.

And yet you don’t have to go far to hear about how meth is still very much in circulation.

Todd Eno: “I’m Todd Eno. I know a few friends of mine that are into it. I do once in a while.”

Eno spent last Sunday morning at a North Portland grocery store, feeding bottles and cans into the recycling machine for some change.

He’s beyond skinny, emaciated, really, his long blue jacket hanging on him like a scarecrow’s coat.

He says he definitely noticed changes between the meth that’s on the street now, and what was sold when pseudoephedrine was easy to get.

Todd Eno “It’s a lot different. MSM is what they’re using.”

Eno’s talking about Methylsulfonylmethane -- one of several alternative meth ingredients you can still get over the counter.

Todd Eno: “You go in there and buy that for a couple of bucks, spend two or three dollars and you can smoke all you want.”

But he says, it’s not as strong as what was on the market before...

Arrests for meth production, trafficking, and possession trended down between 2006 - the year pseudo became a prescription - and last year.

Even officers who were skeptical about the change admit they’ve seen a shift. They’re relieved to find fewer biohazards on crime scenes.

At the same time, Jeff says the days of swooping in on meth cooks coming home from the drug store are long gone.

Jeff: “We obviously can’t do that anymore. We deal with informants, people that are charged with crimes that want to talk. We continue to run with troopers on the highway running interdictions, stuff like that. Working narcotics is the darker side of the business sometimes.”

And getting darker. Jeff says one thing the pseudoephedrine law also changed: when Oregon’s mom & pop shops started to shut down, and drug trafficking organizations solidified their hold on the meth trade...

Bill Piper “Meth labs are down, but most of what you call meth labs weren’t 'labs'. A lot of law enforcement in a lot of states, if they went to a house and someone was making meth in the kitchen sink - most cases that was for persona use – there was a tendency to call that a lab largely because they had to prove they were busting up these labs to get more money. That’s not at all a criticism of law enforcement, it’s more a criticism of the funding streams, which kind of distorted incentives."

Piper says it’s a little too soon for policymakers to say whether the the pseudoephedrine law helped or hurt. There are officers around the state who say the law really cut down local meth production, which caused a slew of environmental and social problems.

But others say it’s eliminated some homegrown competition for large drug trafficking organizations. There’s general agreement these groups are regaining the influence they had before the "Mop & Pop" meth labs set up shop in Oregon.

And from the second column about whether addiction has reduced;

Livingston says the pseudoephedrine law wasn't a bad idea, but it hasn't really made meth less available. Her counselor, New Step Director Maria Couch, agrees she's not seeing fewer meth addicts either.

Maria Couch "I have not. I don't see that the numbers have dropped at all."

Addicts are taking advantage of meth made out of state, or meth made without pseudoephedrine at all.

The year the pseudoephedrine law was passed, 15,000 people sought treatment for meth at state-funded facilities. Last year, that number was closer to 11,000. That's 4000 fewer people.

So did the stranglehold on meth ingredients lead to lower addiction rates? Not exactly. There were plenty of people who needed treatment for meth abuse, but didn't get it, because there wasn't enough money to pay for it.

Karen Wheeler runs Addictions Policy and Programs for the state of Oregon. She says funding for treatment of all addictions has actually dropped by tens of millions of dollars, in the years since the pseudoephedrine law was passed.

Cultural disconnection blamed for violence

Maori Party co-leader, Tariana Turia, is commenting about a hikoi against violence, especially violence toward childen, that is taking place in Murupara today;

“I support Ngati Manawa’s call for help to address the cultural dislocation and disconnection that leads people to commit acts of violence, and as a minister I will do my very best to help them."

There are varying reasons why people commit acts of violence. Cultural dislocation and disconnection may be one - indirectly.

Tariana's view is formally described here;

A third framework, focusing on the role of cultural identity has, over the preceding two decades, been the dominant explanation employed to account for the ethnic asymmetry in child maltreatment rates in New Zealand. This view proposes that it is the degree of association that Māori families have with Māori kin groupings and the level of commitment they show to traditional customary practices that will influence the likelihood of Māori children experiencing maltreatment. From this perspective, strength of Māori identity in families is a protective factor for child abuse, and a lesser identification with Māori cultural domains may increase the risk of children being exposed to maltreatment. Intervention guidelines for child abuse have therefore been specifically developed for Māori, by Māori. These focus on determining the levels of affiliation Māori families have to cultural domains and the strength of cultural identity of individuals who reside in the family. Reattachment of Māori families to cultural domains and customs has therefore become a key feature of current child abuse intervention efforts.

This has recently been tested however.

Researchers dividied 1,011 21 year-olds into non-Maori, sole Maori and Maori/other group according to self-identification.

Comparisons of the sole Māori and Māori/other group showed consistent differences between the groups in terms of several aspects of Māori culture, including:

* frequency of marae visits (p < .001)
* being a member of a Māori group, organisation or sports team (p < .05)
* being a member of a kapa haka (cultural performance) group (p < .001)
* attending a tangi (funeral) or unveiling (p < .001)
* listening to Māori-language radio programmes and watching Māori-language television programmes (p < .001)
* listening and watching programmes in the English language about Māori (p < .001).

(Provision was made for maternal self identification and changing self-identification over time during the classification process.)

And what did the research show?

It was concluded that Maori, and in particular those of sole Maori cultural identity, were at higher risk of exposure to physical punishment and inter-parental violence, and that the associations could not be fully explained by either socio-economic deprivation or exposure to family dysfunction in childhood.

Which throws a very large spanner in the works for Tariana Turia's assumption about cultural "dislocation and disconnection".

The other ATM

John Stossel looks at the extent of cash transfers in the US today. He calls his column, "Transfer Machine". Ironically if he had called it American Transfer Machine the abbreviation would be ATM, which reminds me of the protest banner at a recent Obama rally, Do I Look Like An ATM To You? ;

"The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul," George Bernard Shaw once said.

For a socialist, Shaw demonstrated good sense with that quotation. Unfortunately, America has become a laboratory in which his hypothesis is being tested...

...Frederic Bastiat, the great 19th-century French economist, defined the state as "that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." I don't know if he envisioned one half of the population living off the other half.

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Exercise programme

I tried it, I liked it, you will too!!

The older we get the more important it is to incorporate exercise into our daily routine. This is necessary to maintain cardiovascular health and maintain muscle mass.

If you're over 40, you might want to take it easy at first, then do more repetitions as you become more proficient and build stamina. Warning: It may be too strenuous for some.


Always consult your doctor before starting any exercise program!



SCROLL DOWN.............














































NOW SCROLL UP..

That's enough for the first day. Great job.

Have a glass of wine.

The true extent of unemployment

Most people don't know how the official unemployment rate is calculated. Most are surprised when they find out.

The government, via Statistics New Zealand, conducts a survey called the Household Labour Force Survey. Citizens are recruited into the survey and must participate for two years. Every three months they are phoned and questioned about their work habits and those of other household members. Through the questions it is ascertained whether or not the participant (and any other adult members of the household) is employed. At any given time 15,000 households participate.

The current official unemployment rate gleaned from the survey is 6 percent.

The unemployment rate is not a reflection of people registering at Work and Income. If it was, the number would be considerably higher. For instance, at June 2009 310,000 working-age (18-64 years) people were receiving a benefit (unemployment, sickness, invalid or domestic purposes, etc). That represents around 12 percent of the working age population or 1 in 8 people.

There is good reason to assert this figure is a better representation of the true unemployment rate. Regardless of the reason somebody is reliant on welfare they are unable to support themselves through paid work or other means . They are not employed.

It would also be a fair suggestion to add to this figure those people who are long-term ACC claimants. During the year to June 2008 there were around 108,000 people claiming weekly compensation from ACC; 23,000 had been receiving compensation for 1 year or more. If last year's figures are similar, that would add another 1 percent the 12 percent who are on benefits. Perhaps an accurate unemployment rate hovers around 13 percent.

Certainly there is nothing scientific about these rough calculations . But they serve to show that an unemployment rate of 6 percent is not telling us a great deal about the ratio of dependent working-age people to non-dependent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Prior to the creation of the HLFS the only source of information about unemployment was the census or the number of unemployment benefits claimed. It is rather sobering to take a look at what those figures looked like in the mid-1960s.

5,125 males were unemployed on census night in 1966. Most of the unemployment must have been a temporary affair however given that throughout the sixties there were only ever a couple of hundred people on the unemployment benefit. In 1965 there were only 28,000 people receiving working-age benefits - the majority, a Widow's benefit. There was no ACC. The population was around 2.6 million.

Fewer than 30,000 dependent people then, compared to over 300,000 today. A ten-fold increase with less than a doubling of the population.

How the world has changed. New Zealand's modern benefit system reminds me of the famous quote, "Build it and they will come.

He who laughs last....

Guess who owns this up and coming horse?









Here's a clue.

Doggy freedom

Speeches by politicians are best avoided in my experience. Full of banal, platitudinous, dreary waffle.

But I rather liked this one from Rodney Hide, quoting John Stuart Mill in an effort to get his audience, the NZ Companion Animal Conference, thinking about some basic principles.

I stand for freedom. I take the view, and apply it as Minister, that less government is good government. I think government should leave people as free as possible.

I believe hand-in-hand with individual freedom comes personal responsibility.

Too many people want to be free to do as they please but then aren’t prepared to accept the consequences of their own decisions and actions. They prefer to offload the consequences to others.

The fact is we can’t enjoy individual freedom unless we also accept personal responsibility.

This belief is probably more popular in the abstract than in everyday life.

Faced with any problem, an awful lot of people immediately think that ‘there should be a law against it’. And an awful lot of legislators, listening to the people as they should, agree, and pass a law against it. Sometimes, this law works, and things get better. But mostly it doesn’t.

I think the lowering of road deaths is an example of stronger laws and heavier enforcement producing a good result. Sure we have had to accept random breath tests, but our roads are undoubtedly safer as a result. That’s a small price to pay for reducing the carnage on our roads.

My belief in the need for individual freedom and personal responsibility impacts directly on my job as Minister of Local Government, which includes consideration of the country’s dog laws.

I want to announce today that I have asked officials to begin thinking about a first-principles review of the dog laws.

I have not asked that this be a priority, because I think the government has more important things to do. But I expect that sometime in 2011, you may be asked for your views.

In the meantime, the present laws will apply, although I hope that local authorities will work hard to ensure the emphasis is on freedom, rather than restriction.

I do not know what will emerge from such a first-principles review. In the lead-up to it, we can all do some thinking. Here’s mine: John Stuart Mill, the great 19th-century advocate of freedom, was responsible for what we know as the ‘harm principle’. It says 'the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection'.

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Misleading headline?

The headline from yesterday reads,

Increase in benefit numbers smaller for Sept

Unfortunately the only benefit statistic released was the unemployment benefit.

Which makes me wary.

It is nevertheless good news that fewer people have needed to resort to the dole.

Don't tell the OECD

The OECD is nagging Australia about not letting the unemployed gravitate to disability benefits. That is because only a small percentage ever come off them. The OECD says;

Disability benefit receipt has almost doubled in Australia since 1990, with the biggest growth among the working-age population.

Better keep them away from NZ or they'll be nagging us too. The number of people receiving a sickness or invalid's benefit here has almost trebled since 1990, from 47,000 to 140,000.

I wonder if Paula mentioned that last week when she was in Paris detailing to other employment Ministers at an OECD-hosted meeting how well NZ does in keeping people off benefits. What was it she said again?

"Unlike other countries, we don’t hand over a benefit and then offer to help someone find work."

Australians discovering extent of welfare-upbringing disadvantage

The Australian National University has been conducting an ongoing survey into young people, their experiences and attitudes. It involves participation of some 4,000 youth accessed through Centrelink (Work and income equivalent) records. Some of their latest findings were presented to the Australian Conference of Economists last week. The Melbourne Age reports;

Young people who have grown up in welfare-dependent families are disadvantaged in more ways than has previously been realised, a study shows.

From much higher rates of asthma and hospitalisation to much lower rates of post-school study and entry to university, the young are likely to suffer the disadvantages of their parents....

..."People have suspected these differences but I'm not sure we knew of the extent of the disadvantage and the breadth," Professor Cobb-Clark said.

Specific measurements of various differences are provided. Frankly, unlike Professor Cobb-Clark, I am surprised that the differences weren't greater. It may be that there is a positive bias because participation in the survey was voluntary so the sample is a more motivated group.

The Centre for Independent Studies says;

"Welfare campaigners this week lobbied the government to lift unemployment benefits, after the OECD revealed that more than half the jobless households in Australia are ‘poor’: with incomes less than half of the median.

But acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard did not take the bait, standing by the government’s decision not to increase unemployment benefits and payments for sole parents in this year’s budget.

Gillard was right to stay firm. More work, not more welfare, is what these families need to improve their economic situation and the well-being of their children.

One in eight kids now lives in a jobless household. Most of us instinctively appreciate that the striking disadvantage they face extends well beyond the purely economic.

Fairfax’s Adele Horin reported yesterday on new research from the Youth in Focus study released at the Australian Conference of Economists this week. It highlights just how destructive welfare and parental joblessness is for these kids.

If welfare rights campaigners who this week attacked the government really want to improve the lives of those they claim to help, they could start by recognising that making welfare more attractive will only intensify their problems."

Couldn't agree more.

Worst excesses of welfare; UK and NZ parallels

The destructive practice of paying women to have babies with casual acquaintances is starting to permeate the collective consciousness of the UK population. Even PM Gordon Brown is starting to talk about the ill-advised policy that pays 16 and 17 year-old mothers to live 'independently' in council flats.

A friend has just returned from the UK. She brought with her an article from the Daily Mail, knowing I would be interested. Fortunately it is also on-line. Here I will excerpt pieces and draw New Zealand parallels.

It opens;

Machetes by the door, drugs on the table - and mothers paid by the state to have babies with men they barely know. What HAVE we done to the British family? It's the most destructive crisis of our age - a generation of violent, illiterate, lawless young men living outside civilised society.

New Zealand - A prison population at an all-time high, convictions for violence at an all time high, gangs that are getting more vicious with no shortage of newcomers.

It always started the same way, he said: he'd start seeing a woman, and she'd tell him she was on the Pill.

Then two weeks later: 'Bang, she gets pregnant.' There was never any discussion about the pregnancy.

As far as he was concerned, they were barely an item at that stage - and they were certainly not about to move in together.

So why did these women choose to have babies by a man they barely knew?

Prince, who is 37, laid the blame squarely on benefits: 'Women get money from the Government; men get eradicated. What do you need a man for? The Government has taken our place.

Politicians, for their part, blame the rising numbers of troubled children on the breakdown of the family and the absence of fathers.

This is a fundamental mistake: they are presuming there is a family in the first place.

Above all, the Government needs to recognise that benefits are a powerful incentive, particularly for young girls.

For the past few years, Britain has had the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe, with 90 per cent of births occurring outside marriage.

The British teenage birth rate (27 per 1,000 15-19 year-olds) is behind New Zealand's at 32 (and for Maori it rises to 80). There is a marked correlation between the high Maori teenage birthrate and high Maori crime rate.

An overhaul of the benefit system is clearly at the heart of transforming the lives of disadvantaged children. But to accuse their mothers of being feckless is unjust: they are merely responding to the economics of the situation.

They have grasped the consequences of our poor education system better than our politicians ever have.

Last year, less than half of teenagers finished compulsory schooling with five good GSCEs that included maths and English. Of those, the ones who do worst of all are children from lowincome families.

Then what happens? The boys take to crime - and the girls get pregnant.

Incredibly, more than a quarter of British children are now raised in single-parent families - and nine out of ten of them are headed by women.

At the last census 28 percent of New Zealand families with dependent children were headed by a single parent - eight out of ten are women. Male single parenthood is more common among Maori probably accounting for the gender difference with the UK.

What future is there in Britain today for a girl without qualifications?

Skilled and hard-working immigrants now monopolise menial jobs, and the next step up - a job, for example, in catering or hairdressing - pays about £10,000 a year before tax.

Which is slightly less than a girl with two children receives in benefits, and without the incentive of somewhere to live rent-free.

In Streatham, South London, I overheard two young girls pushing buggies talking about a friend. 'Why she got pregnant?' asked one. 'She's got a good job!'

In other words, if you were in well-paid employment, with good prospects, there was no reason to have children.

The average income for 18-24 year-olds is $384 - below the average income of a single parent on the DPB.

Sir Norman Bettison, chief constable of West Yorkshire Police, summed up the situation starkly: 'We are talking here about the perverting influence of welfare. The more kids you have, the more money you get.'

In New Zealand around 5,000 babies are added to an existing benefit each year.

Many single mothers are excellent parents, of course. But the Government has put disadvantaged girls in a position where the only career open to them, the only possibility of an independent life, is to have children - whether they want to or not, whether they are likely to be good mothers or not.

The state, as Prince pointed out, has indeed taken over the role of both husband and employer.

With a combination of financial incentives and poor schools, it is ensuring a steady supply of babies who start life with all the factors in place to become the next generation living on benefits or the proceeds of crime.

What is the Government doing about this cynical cycle of deprivation?

Over the past few years, it has come up with a plethora of schemes to intervene ever earlier in the life of a disadvantaged child. In other words, it has concentrated on the consequences of single parenthood - but not the cause.

Ditto, ditto, ditto for NZ. Last week the latest was announced. Getting parents back into the class room to teach them how to raise their ill-disciplined children.

What is the point of setting targets to end child poverty when the Government's policies are creating tomorrow's poorest children - and grandchildren?

Exactly. See my post about the Maori Party targets to end child poverty.

So why hasn't the Government reformed the benefit system? It's as if they're offering car drivers a bonus for every crash - then acting surprised when accidents shoot up.

Good analogy. Cash is offered to teenagers to have babies and then hands are rung over the rising teenage birthrate. The only defence of this stupidity is that the two are not related. Yet research has shown the two are related.

The absence of a male role model has a particularly profound effect on disadvantaged boys during their teenage years.

A third of 14-to-25-year-olds questioned for a survey by the Prince's Trust did not have a parent whom they considered a role model.

More than half said they'd joined a gang to acquire a sense of identity, while a quarter said they were in search of someone to look up to.

These boys are unlikely to find male role models in schools. The number of male teachers has slumped to its lowest level in at least 20 years; and in primary school, 85 per cent of teachers are female. Even in youth offending teams, women make up the majority of the staff.

This year, according to the latest research, one in three children who live with a single mother will spend less than six hours a week with a male role model - whether a father figure, relative or teacher.

All the odds are stacked against them. Even children on the 'at risk' register are five times more likely to have single teenage mothers - as Prince knows all too well.

Two of his children, he discovered recently, were being neglected by their 19-year-old mother.

'The house was like a crack house: dirty clothes everywhere,' he said. 'She fed them crappy food, she left the kids [to] fall asleep in front of the TV. My boy was underweight and quiet.'

Social services removed the children and gave them to their maternal grandmother to bring up. But Prince's ex-girlfriend, he says, has made no attempt to get her children back.

He shrugged. 'She's never had a job. She's lived off the Government and what men give her.'

'Prince' is no prince either. His holier than thou tone is somewhat derisible. But he is spot on when he sums up the situation. The government has usurped fathers and the vital role they play, causing massive social problems. And that is no less true in this country.

"Capitalism needs to lift its game."

Karl Du Fresne has a very readable column posted entitled, Capitalism needs to lift its game.

Essentially we blame systems instead of the individuals tainting them. Capitalism gets a bad name because of greedy, immoral people. The law gets a bad name because of exploitive, dissolute lawyers. Democracy gets a bad name because of unprincipled, power-hungry politicians.

It doesn't follow that we throw out the systems.

Ah, but you might say, the welfare state gets a bad name because of abusive, free-loading types and yet you want to fundamentally change it. True. But that is because it hasn't proved itself to be the best option. Unlike capitalism which, as Du Fresne writes,

"...is the only economic system that has consistently demonstrated, over time, that it can improve the human condition. That’s why all the most humane, liberal, advanced societies in the world have capitalist economies."

Frankly, I would settle for a large reduction in the size of the welfare state but its inbuilt mechanisms mean it will always tend towards growth. There-in lies the conundrum.

I voted for Dane

Last night was the grand final of Homai Te Pakipaki. I voted for Dane Moeke - not because his was the best performance on the night. But because he has the most talent. Unfortunately last night it was looking raw, almost undercooked.

At every performance Dane has tackled songs that have stretched his voice. His first performance of I Will Always Love You was amazing - a much overused word that I rarely use. And two weeks ago he took on the Celine Dion number, My Heart Will Go On. Apart from one crack, again he delivered the crescendos powerfully and left me transfixed.

But last night he bit off more than he could chew. I don't know whether the song was his choice but he could have done with better advice.

The winner, Roland Williams, sang Me and Mrs Jones superbly but it's a safe choice for any half decent male singer. And he does have the x factor going on with the ladies. He was the only danger to Dane.

But Dane. You were the winner of the series on sheer potential and for having the guts to push it. Today go watch Little Miss Sunshine because it'll lift your spirits and it has a message that you need to take to heart. Winners are the ones who never give up. If I don't hear you sing again I will be much the poorer for it.

Blog stats

Exceeded 6,000 visits for first time ever last month.

Thanks for staying tuned in. And leaving comments which I (nearly) always appreciate. And for being civil and considered.

Children of the last recession

There are social trends happening here - and in other similar developed countries - which demand some attention.

It is true that through the second half of the nineties and early part of the 2000s some social indicators were heading in the right direction. But inexplicably they reversed. No. It wasn't the advent of tougher economic times because the trends reversed in advance.

Examples; Teenage birth, drinking and driving, crime in general, homelessness (anecdotally), youth suicide?

A couple of these are exclusively functions of the young, others, disproportionately. But there hasn't been a demographic blip. I have another theory.

The change is driven by the children born in the last recession who have been hitting adolescence and young adulthood. In 1990-1992 welfare dependence was very heavy. There were far more young people on welfare than ever before. They were abusing alcohol and other substances in greater numbers than before. Many, subsequently, never left the welfare ranks. Thus their children were affected pre- and post birth by their lifestyles. Many are disaffected and lawless. And probably mentally disturbed.

Huge hike in cannabis offences

Oh yes. Prohibition is a wonderful deterrent.



Recorded cannabis offences rose by almost 26 percent in the year to June 2009.

Police downplay rising crime

The June quarter crime statistics have just been released and they aren't good. What irks me no end is the spin the police put on them.

There were 442,540 recorded offences compared with 426,690 for last year, an increase of 3.7 percent. During this time New Zealand's resident population increased by approximately one percent. So, the recorded offence rate per head of population increased by only 2.8 percent.

'Only' be damned.

That's 15,850 more offences. Many, many more victims of crime.

It is the job of the police to prevent crime, not to normalise or downplay it.

What are you going to do when you grow up?

My generation commonly referred to adults as 'grown-ups'. I suppose it was the natural extension of the often-asked question, what are you going to be when you grow up? Or, what are you going to do when you grow up?

I am going to have kids, then I am going back to school to learn how to be a grown-up.

But Anne Tolley says nobody can force you to. Not even Work and Income.

That's good. 'Cause I was about as interested in a second time round as I am in the first.

Well if you aren't interested in learning how to be a grown-up from strangers, what about your own mum and dad?

What dad?

Well what about your mum?

She's too busy.

Doing what?

Going to school learning how to be a grown-up

Paula Bennett goes to Paris

Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett, is in Paris addressing her OECD counterparts about what New Zealand has done in the face of recession.

“I’ll be focusing on our country’s strong “work first” approach. Unlike other countries, we don’t hand over a benefit and then offer to help someone find work."

Now she may be saying that in a media statement, but what's the chances she will say that directly to other Ministers? Then again, this is Paula Bennett. Just which countries does she think let people onto welfare more readily than NZ does? It'd be interesting to know.

NZ has not been hit as hard as others by the recession and fortunately, when redundancies have occurred, other jobs can sometimes be found, hence NZ's success in work placement. But let's not go near other benefits..... For instance, if NZ treated workless single parents as unemployed, in the way other OECD countries do, her 'triaging' record would look a lot less positive.

(As well the picture is further complicated by other countries differing social security systems. Many have unemployment insurance whereby people have immediate entitlements to payments due to premiums paid by employers/employees/dedicated taxes. Whereas here, at the mercy of unemployment benefits funded through general taxation, entitlement is far more tenuous.)

“I’ll also look at how we’ve stimulated the economy through tax cuts ...."

Well, I must have missed that. So I can't comment. Anybody else want to?

Maori and Child Poverty

From today's NZ Herald;

In 2008 the Maori Party campaigned on ending child poverty by 2020. Child poverty is, however, implicitly tied in with welfare dependence.

Periodically Pita Sharples is heard promoting work-for-the-dole. He has said that welfare is hurting Maori, destroying their mana. And yet, in the same breath, he acknowledges that sole parents are part of Maori culture and must be supported.

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Violence - "a harsh lesson in reality"

The young cynic takes a candid look at violence.

(This is a kid who loves to wander around with the cat cradled in his arms and gets 'honours' for his rendition of Moonlight Sonata.)

'Radical' to 'run-of-the-mill'

I have been trying to find a quote I once read about how thinking changes over time, simply that today's radical idea is tomorrow's accepted wisdom. Of course, the transformation can be quite protracted. Arthur C Clarke said;

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.


The relevance is to the gradual change in various country's response to drugs. A conference has just been held at El Paso, Texas;

More than two dozen drug experts, academics, border journalists and law enforcement officials gathered to compare notes for three days about drug policy, coming from Mexico, the United States and even Colombia.

Two seemingly unlikely advocates of radical change at the conference were Terry Nelson, a retired federal agent, and James Gray, a California state judge, both of whom once sent drug offenders to prison.

“The global war on drugs is probably the greatest public policy failure of all time,” said Nelson, who stalked traffickers in the Caribbean and Latin America during three decades with the U.S. Border Patrol, Customs and Department of Homeland Security.

“The drug war has brought us the militarization of our police force,” Nelson said. “And it's killing our families when you put a mother or father in jail for smoking small amounts of marijuana.”

Nelson said the answer is legalization, education and regulation, the treatment given two other dangerous but popular legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

Unbelievable interview

This has got to be the whackiest interview script I have ever read. Paul Holmes interviewing Hone Harawira about his goal to make criminals out of tobacco manufacturers;

PAUL What do you want to actually see Hone, do you want to see a ban, do you want to see prohibition?

HONE I'd like to see the production sale and manufacture of tobacco in Aotearoa banned yeah. I think that unlike alcohol and other drugs which people like, with cigarettes most people actually want to stop more than 80% of smokers want to stop, so it's not like there's going to be a black market...

Really?

"...You can't create a black market in a situation where people don’t really want the product."

If people "really don't want the product" why is there a substantial existing legal market?

PAUL So you'd ban cigarette sales, ban tobacco, production of tobacco, marketing tobacco, well that’s already banned, you'd ban the sales but people will still want their smokes, that’s what I'm saying, because you would now turn them into criminals.

HONE No no no no no.

PAUL Well we've had that....

HONE No no no no no no no, we have deliberately not targeted smokers because I know from having been a smoker that if you target smokers all you do is piss them off, so you go after the tobacco companies and most smokers actually support what it is that we're trying to do here, that’s number one, number two you have to arrange a regime whereby you can help people wean themselves off tobacco, but again going back to that fact again, that most New Zealanders who do smoke want to stop, it's not that hard to do.

Apparently it's not that hard to give up heroin either. Yet despite it being illegal there are still thousands of heroin addicts.

PAUL You see even Helen Clark thought that prohibition had its limits and might not work, she said the trouble with prohibition and banning and she is very stridently anti tobacco, she said it makes criminals of addicts. So the courts clog up because someone's been caught smoking a cigarette.

HONE No no no, no no no, the courts don’t clog up with smokers, because we're not banning smoking, we're banning the production, sale and manufacture of tobacco. The only people who would end up in court would be the tobacco companies, but if we pass the law they'd be gone tomorrow Paul, wouldn’t you be happy?

PAUL Probably so I suppose, but where would we get our smokes? From the gangs?

HONE No you wouldn’t get your smokes from the gangs.

PAUL Of course you would you'd drive it underground.

HONE No you wouldn’t get your smokes from the gangs, because the gangs find greater money in other drugs, cigarettes are not that kind of a product. You would maintain a measure of production for weaning off purposes, for all of those kinds of situations but again going back to the knowledge and the fact that most New Zealanders want to stop it's just enough to get them out of the game. Paul, 5,000 New Zealanders every single year die form cigarettes. If a country did that to us Paul, we'd declare war, a company's doing it to us and we're letting it happen. There's something wrong there.

PAUL At the same time though Hone a nicotine addict doesn’t rush out and bang an old lady on the head because he hasn’t got any smokes left. Why don’t you tackle crime?

HONE That’s great if a smoker's not going to go to knock and old lady on the head over cigarettes, well let's just ban it, it's not gonna lead to any crime.

PAUL No but what I'm saying is the nicotine addict is not a danger to society, look at the prison population announced this week, more people in prison, 50% of them Maori, Maori comprise 50% of the population, why don’t you take on ...

HONE If you want to get into this whole sort of gang thing Paul, in the history of the gangs say since 1970 there'd be less than 500 people have died as a result of that, in that same 30 year period, in that same 30 year period, listen to this Paul nearly 100,000 New Zealanders have died from tobacco. What's the big fuss about gangs, it's not gangs that’s killing New Zealanders it's tobacco.

Un-bloody-believable. There is no account taken of the difference between the kinds of violent, often young, deaths associated with gangs and prohibition and people dying from smoking related illnesses towards the end of their natural allotted time. Or that drugs that gangs manufacture and sell also kill.

The man is a lunatic. Fortunately someone sane was listening in and made a comment or two;

RICHARD PREBBLE – Former ACT Leader

...Look the thing that gets me is this, he gave up smoking, it's a matter of personal responsibility and he's trying to claim that other people can't, it would be far better if he actually said to people this is something you have to take personal responsibility for, it's not easy but I've done it, if I've done it you can do it, instead he wants the colonial state to ban cigarettes for him. I mean it's the most patronising statement I've seen from a politician in a long time, and there's plenty of competition for that position, but what he's doing won't work, and just because it's a good cause that doesn’t make it right.....In the valley that I'm in there's so much marijuana grown and smoked that you actually see people smoking it quite openly. Now the Police can't stop that, and yet here we are having an MP who apparently is so out of touch with his electorate doesn’t realise that marijuana is growing wild in the north and is now saying he's going to ban tobacco. Look if I was in organised crime and I heard Hone this morning, I'd be writing out a cheque for his campaign.

Alcohol and moral panic

Every day there are stories in the media related to alcohol laws and consumption, with an emphasis on young people. One could get bored by them. Or one could have a look at some statistics.



When I overlay the 15+ population it looks like this.



The next graph and accompanying notes reveal more;


It is interesting to see how this translates to the amount of alcohol available for consumption per person above the purchasing age (noting that the minimum age for purchasing alcoholic beverages changed from 20 to 18 years in 1999). Before this, the amount of alcohol available per person aged 20 years or over had generally been declining since 1986. It fell by 24 percent, from 12.8 litres per person in 1986 to 9.8 litres per person in 1999. Since the purchasing age was lowered, the amount available per person aged 18 years or over has risen slightly from 9.4 litres in 1999 to 9.8 litres in 2007.

So what we are currently experiencing daily through the media is largely unsubstantiated moral panic. Yes there are problems with alcohol. Nobody in their right mind would deny it. But is the situation any worse than it was 20 or 30 years ago? And I put that time frame on it because it is those who were young 20 or 30 years ago making the fuss and clamouring for greater regulation.

Of course it is all cloaked in well-meaning paternalism like "...too many young people are killing themselves on the roads." Well, of course they are. One is one too many. But, again, is it getting worse? No.

Blogging again

Young Robert has leapt back to life. Can't tidy or censor the stuff. It just is.

This should wake you up

There are those who want to see local government much more heavily involved in "improving social well-being" - in practical terms providing more social services, social housing, etc. Maori will push this agenda because they want funding channelled into outfits like urban Maori authorities so that they can provide (and control) what they want for their own people.

Well, that might be OK if central government was getting out of the game - but it ain't. This will be a whole new layer of government activity paid for by you.

Now consider this headline from NewstalkZB today;

Brown and Bradford for Super city?

Why choosing a benefit is rational

The following chart is from a report called Dynamic Benefits and is based on UK data. The UK has a lone parent benefit rate similar to NZ in its generosity.



Note the statement under the figures - ...life choices other than work are realistic and even rational ones to take.

Here is a rough comparison for New Zealand. The median weekly income from working is taken from NZ Statistics Income Survey with 20 percent tax applied. The others are the result of some googling and are fairly arbitrary. The benefit incomes include other top-ups like accommodation supplement, family tax credit, etc.

Occupation/ Net income p.w. from median female wages

• Single person out of work $250 (all benefits)
• Median weekly income 15-24 year-olds $384
• Waitress/Bar staff/Cleaner $400
• Receptionist $415
• Hairdresser $418
• Single parent with one child out of work $430 (all benefits)
• Shop Assistant $448
• Typist $512
• Librarian $544
• Nurse $569

Seriously, if you had no or few school qualifications or little work ethic/inclination, why not choose motherhood?

Sue Bradford - shame about the causes

This won't be a very popular post but I am going to say something - or two if I can stretch to it - positive about Sue Bradford.

When I made submissions to the Social Services Select Committee Sue was never rude or intimidating (unlike Philip Field and Liz Gordon who could both became apoplectic). And she listened and would ask questions.

She has two strong personal attributes, courage and commitment. Shame about the causes she brought them to.

But I am glad she has resigned from Parliament. Because she is a thorn in the side of welfare reform - a particularly sharp one. She will, of course, continue to be, in some capacity. What capacity awaits to be seen.

With the extreme leftist welfare ethos gone from the Greens, Labour may be freer to look afresh at what needs doing. After all, it is more often than not that Labour is the party of reform.

The "lynch mob mentality" is just as ugly

A Palmerston North judge banned photographs of the accused and the accused is not seeking bail. The reason for both actions is the "lynch mob mentality" alive and well in the community meaning the accused and his family would not be safe if either of these things happened. Threats have been made against the accused's brother. The accused is allegedly responsible for the death of a 3 year-old girl.

Some children live in a culture of neglect and violence. It occurs to me that there can be more than one potential killer within a group of people that have contact with a child. The people brimming with retribution are quite probably just as bad as the accused. And while they are posturing and slagging off and brewing, they are no doubt doing it around children. It's a dismal picture. Clueless, valueless people in charge of young minds.

Hone on the warpath

Hone Harawira plans to slaughter tobacco industry executives when he drags them before a Maori Affairs select committee 'full inquiry' into their industry.

He says, "...tobacco companies are responsible for the murder of 100,000 New Zealand citizens in the last 25 years."

Are you comfortable with that statement? National obviously is because they have given this retributive bully session the go-ahead.

... I thank the National Party leadership and in particular Prime Minister John Key, his deputy Bill English, and Committee Chairman Tau Henare for supporting this because if they hadn’t, it would have died on the table

This inquiry will be New Zealand’s greatest opportunity to have Tobacco companies explain their actions of promoting and maintaining tobacco addiction, which leads to these horrific deaths.

It will also provide New Zealand's greatest opportunity for parliamentary representatives to explain why they support the promoting and maintenance of tobacco addiction by taking their own sizeable cut of the profits.

Perhaps Hone could appear in that capacity?

He says, "To be brutally frank Mr Speaker, I’d like to lynch these #$^&** tobacco company executives."

In which case a murder/suicide would be the most elegant solution. Which amply illustrates the hot-headed stupidity of Hone's rhetoric.

Phoney accusations of racism

A post over at Oswald's reminded me of two protest signs recently waved at the President of the US;

"The problem with Obama isn't that he's black; it's that he's red."

and

"Do I look like an ATM to you?"

Lower the age Garth George can drive until!

Garth George's column today is the work of a grumpy old man not thinking straight. It's a punitive rant against young people driving. I have showed before that the statistics for young drivers have improved considerably over the years yet people like George, who was young during a time when there was more irresponsibility and death on the roads, want to take away freedoms across the board. Put the driving age up to 18! Put the legal drinking age up to 20! Make people with fast cars pay more insurance!

Well two can play at that. Take the driving age down at the other end when the age-risk factor demonstrably climbs again. Let's campaign against the elderly on the roads. Lower the age Garth George can drive until!

Not likely. Because we are all going to be elderly one day.

Whereas we have already been young and now resent that we are no longer. So let's blame young people for as much as we can. Let's take away their freedoms and preserve our own. Because we are old and drive sensible cars at sensible speeds. Some of us get slow and doddery and, to be frank, dangerous, but why should we all suffer? Why should we all be tarred with the same brush?

Exactly.

Kids need 'free computers'

Apparently the PPTA are going to make submissions to the government regarding accessibility of computers to poor kids. Thousands of - one estimate puts it at 100,000 - kids need 'free computers'. I wonder how many homes with no computer/internet access have Sky TV? A good number.

So this is the next 'public good' argument. These children are our future and they need to be properly educated which won't happen if they can't get to the internet to research their homework.

Well actually they can get to the internet. At their local library, internet cafe, at their friends houses and when they are at school. In fact, these are possibly better places for them to be doing their research if their own home is chaotic and overcrowded.

It is the parents who have to do the prioritising. It is the parents who have to put a value on learning over leisure. It is not the job of perfect strangers. And it pains me to say so. Because education is key to raising aspirations and expectations. But what lesson is learnt when people can constantly look to others instead of themselves for solutions?

Police passing the buck

Yesterday I posted statistics showing that convictions for crime had increased by 28 percent in the last ten years and one commentor said that we need far more cops. I am not sure that we do. What we need is for cops to focus on crimes against people and property instead of a myriad other things. The writer of the following latter, spotted in the Hutt News, encapsulates the sentiment;

Kitten, anybody?

That was quick - 6 weeks old, eating solids, drinking cow's milk and house-trained.

Now they need homes - except for Geoffrey. Geoffrey stays. A most ungainly, misshapen but clever cat. A go-getter which will unfortunately probably include go-getting things we wish he hadn't gone and gotten.



Palangi (behind Geoff) is a boy. He has been the least interested in trivial matters like food but is the most interested in the outdoors. Sits at the window watching more than the others. He's a big picture boy.



Eddie likes being handled. He is the most like his mum. Small and fine featured. Not that you can tell from this shot. He's the sensitive type.



And last but not least is Tabs - another boy I think. Possibly the prettiest and knows it. He likes to watch his reflection in our highly polished piano. A self-aware sort. Sam's favourite so parting will be tricky.




David would keep the lot. I am a tad more practical. If we can find good and caring homes they will go. Kitten anybody?

Conviction and sentencing statistics

Conviction and sentencing statistics 1999 - 2008 contains lots of interesting stuff. For instance;

* Between 1999 and 2008, the number of charges prosecuted increased by 27 percent.
* From 1999 to 2008, the number of charges resulting in a conviction rose by 28 percent.
* The number of charges that were not proved increased by 29 percent from 1999 to 2008.

Consistent increase throughout. The population increased by 11 percent over the same time - the 15-40 year-old age group, from which most crime hails, increased by only 8 percent.

Between 2003 and 2008, the number of convictions for violent offences rose by 40 percent and the number of convictions for traffic offences rose by 29 percent.

Yet during the 2008 election campaign I constantly heard that crime, including violent crime, was decreasing. Yet every measure - victimisation reports through to conviction rates show the opposite.

# The prosecution rate was higher than average in many rural North Island areas (Figure 3). In 2008, rates ranged from less than 170 per 10,000 residents in Kaikoura, Te Awamutu, Waipukurau, Feilding, and Gore to over 450 per 10,000 residents in Rotorua, Kaikohe, Gisborne, Whangarei, and Taupo.

Ethnicity and gang factors. Not surprising but unsettling that some of NZ's most popular tourist destinations are relatively dangerous places.



Total prosecutions look like this;



The number of people sentenced to imprisonment increased by 32 percent between 1999 and 2006. From 2006 to 2008 however, this number has decreased by 17 percent.

And yet the prison muster has just reached an all-time high. This must be due to longer sentencing/rejection of parole.

The number of offenders receiving deferment rose by 74 percent from 1999 to 2008.

The ONLY type of sentencing that is decreasing is imprisonment. But in 2008 2,479 convictions resulted in home detention sentences.

Overall, nothing to write home about.

Drink/driving and tougher penalties

Some discussion on talkback about two recent deaths due to drink/driving highlighted in the DomPost, prompted me to look at a country where penalties are tougher.

According to the Singapore police these are the current penalties for drink driving. (Their limits are the same as in NZ by the way);

First Time – Drink driver will be fined between $1000 and $5000 or six months imprisonment.

Second Time – Drink driver will be fined between $3000 and $10,000 fine and imprisonment for a term of up to one year.

Repeated Time – Drink Driver will face enhanced punishment up to 3 times the penalty, a maximum of $30,000 fine and three years' imprisonment.

Offenders causing death or serious injuries can also be caned up to 6 strokes.

All those convicted will be disqualified from driving for at least 1 year, even if they have not caused any traffic accidents.

Is it working? The police say:

The significant rise in drink-driving arrests is a worrying trend – recording a 7% rise from 3,733 cases in 2006, to 4,009 cases in 2007. The total number of drink-driving cases in 2007 has also been the highest for the last 10 years.

So now the police are trying something different;

Apart from maintaining regular enforcement efforts against drink driving, Traffic Police also collaborated with entertainment outlet operators in 2008 to launch several new Anti Drink Drive (ADD) initiatives. For example, the distribution of complimentary taxi vouchers and the provision of a complimentary chauffeur service to escort drunken patrons home.

Result?

A drop of 10.5 percent in arrests for drink/driving from 2007 to 2008.

Perhaps NZ has to start thinking beyond penalties.

What will break the bias?

Historian, David Thompson, wrote an essay in 1990 about the scholarship surrounding the New Zealand welfare state. He described it as uncritical, laudatory, containing a distinct left-wing bias, overwhelmingly political, naive, riddled with jargon. About the available critiques he wrote;

The superficial, shadow-boxing nature of many of these critiques should also be noted. At one level they are valid and trenchant counterblasts to the more familiar litanies of increase and success. At a deeper level, however, they stem from and serve to reinforce widely shared assumptions about the correct and inevitable nature of the welfare state. What is criticised is not the welfare state itself, but the failure to make ours more of a welfare state - more munificent, more redistributive, more dominant. Evidence of failure does not lead to a querying of the goals and ideals of the welfare state, or a search for other ways of organising a modern society. New Zealand lacks, perhaps most strikingly by contrast with North America, a parallel scholarship built on opposition to the welfare state. It is possible to oppose the welfare state in important aspects and yet be human, civilised and thoughtful, though one might doubt it reading the New Zealand literature. If one of the duties of scholars is to keep alive and develop alternative, unfashionable modes of thought, then it must be said that our intellectual traditions have been impoverished by an unwillingness or inability to reflect upon core assumptions - in short, to question ourselves.

And really, not much has changed.

A couple of books that criticised the welfare system were published by the NZ Business Roundtable during the 1990s, but neither were by New Zealand writers. This century, now nearly nine years old, has seen a continuation of dominance by left-leaning academia and policy analysts whose criticism of the welfare state extends only as far as changing delivery mechanisms, levels and targets. Margaret McClure's extensive work spanning one hundred years of social security is a mine of useful information but her language is full of loathing for private charity. Her approval of the welfare state is signalled in the title of her work, A Civilised Community.

The reform landscape is barren. There is absolutely nothing that would indicate National wants to have a debate about "the way a modern society organises itself." What will it take to break the uncritical bias towards the welfare state?

Or, is it already broken and just not reflected among the lofty elites, political leaders and sentinel civil servants?

Children in workless HOUSEHOLDS

A commentor has taken issue with my post about the number of NZ children living in workless families. Apparently the European statistics were for households - not families. That was how the chart was labelled unfortunately. I didn't label it.

Here is another chart which is based on households. The data is not as up-to-date but shows essentially the same thing. The NZ proportion is high compared to many other European countries;

The National/Act government - to the left of Sweden's

How depressing.

The National/Act government can't even keep up with the Swedish government, which is reducing taxes to cope with the recession. From their budget for 2009;

To strengthen the work-first principle and increase the labour supply, the Government proposes a third step in the in-work tax credit and a reduction in total state income tax. The proposals have an overall scope of SEK 15 billion. The three steps combined mean that approximately 97 per cent of all people in full-time work will have received tax reductions of more than SEK 1 000 a month.

The Government also presents a tax package for businesses that will lower their taxes by nearly SEK 16 billion in 2009. The aim is to strengthen incentives for companies to invest and take on new employees. The corporate tax rate will be reduced from 28 to just over 26 per cent and employers' social security contributions will be reduced by one percentage point. In addition, the administrative burden on businesses will be eased by a number of simplifications, as a step towards the Government's target of reducing the administrative burden on businesses by 25 per cent by 2010.

Till unemployment do us part

Unemployment and children

The Summitt I attended on Wednesday was a hand-wringing hui about children affected by recession and what the government should be doing for them. My contention was child poverty in NZ is fairly constant. The recession has only broadened it.

According to the NZ Christian Council for Social Services, at June 2009 there were 219,627 children relying on benefits. 13.5 percent of working age beneficiaries have a current earnings declaration meaning they had participated in work throughout or at some point during the previous 12 months. A crude calculation taking 13.5 percent off the total to get the lowest possible number of children with non-working parents produces 189,977.

There are an estimated 1,083,690 children aged under 18 (NZ Statistics).

The percentage of children in workless families is therefore 17.5 percent.

So how does that compare to Europe?



NZ is higher than any.

But when unemployment rates are laid alongside these countries, the picture changes.



This strikingly illustrates the effect of the DPB.

Summit delegate disagrees with benefit recommendations

Media Release

SUMMIT DELEGATE DISAGREES WITH BENEFIT RECOMMENDATIONS
Thursday, 17 September, 2009

A Child Poverty Summit convened by the Every Child Counts organisation has recommended higher core benefit levels.

As one of the 70 invited delegates attending the Summit welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell says she did not agree with this proposal. "As a participant in the Social Exclusion workshop which made this particular recommendation, I argued against it. There are at least nine international research papers that show that an increase in benefit levels increases the number of children born outside of marriage or a stable relationship. This has the effect of drawing more children onto benefits, putting even more children at risk of the unintended consequences the Summit wants to reduce."

"Additionally, the figures supplied by Every Child Counts show that of the children living below the poverty threshold 65,000 were in sole parent families. I emphasised that there are currently around 165,000 children reliant on a DPB income. If the majority are not below the poverty threshold, why increase the level of the benefit across the board? Factors beyond the income level are responsible for the poverty."

Neither of these objections was dealt with indicating that the recommendation is more about ideology than enduring solutions.

Over half of adolescents spent time on a benefit

Media release

OVER HALF OF ADOLESCENTS SPENT TIME ON A BENEFIT
Thursday, September 17, 2009

As many as 55 percent of children reaching adolescence have spent time being supported by a benefit. According to Lindsay Mitchell, welfare commentator, this is the startling finding of research just published by the Ministry of Social Development

The study also found that throughout most of the 1990s around one in four children were included in a benefit at birth or very soon after. Since 2000 the proportion had declined to one in five children born in 2005 and 2006, and 18 percent of children born in 2007.

Mitchell said that although the trend had been positive it was sobering to learn just how little record low unemployment had affected child reliance on welfare. "In 2005 New Zealand had the lowest unemployment rate in the developed world, yet one in five children were still being born onto a benefit."

"The trend has now, however, reversed. A large majority of children relying on main benefits have a parent on the DPB and since 2007, the number of DPB recipients has grown from 96,467 (June 2007) to 104,400 (June 2009). Others rely on the unemployment benefit which has more than doubled from 23,159 to 50,855 over the same period."

As well as starting their lives on a benefit, large numbers of children stay there for long periods. The report says that just over half of children currently reaching adolescence have been supported by the main benefits* at some time. Specifically,

"...one in five children born in 1993 are estimated to have been supported by a main benefit for seven or more of their first 14 years of life. An estimated one in ten spent a total of 11 or more of their first 14 years of life supported by a main benefit. "

Mitchell said that growing up on welfare has become a deeply entrenched facet of life for New Zealand children, one which seems largely impervious to economic conditions.

"As long as the welfare system remains essentially unchanged, too many children are going to experience the varying degrees of disadvantage that go hand-in-hand with life on a benefit."

Subsidies will always be abused

Paula Bennett is impressed with 1,000 new subsidised jobs created after potential employers were offered $5,000 to employ a young person for six months. While I fully support the sentiment behind getting young people into jobs, distorting the value of their labour with subsidies is probably not the answer.

The rules for the Job Ops scheme were tightened after initial publicity last month about a rush of employers seeking the subsidy. The criteria now state that jobs must be "opportunities that wouldn't exist if the Job Ops subsidy wasn't available".

What a nonsense. There is no test of proof. For instance, it could be argued that a employer had previously advertised the position without subsidy. But the employer could counter, possibly truthfully, that he had changed his mind about offering a position due to the recession. Then he had changed it back when the subsidy became available. Or it could be argued that a young person is employed alongside others doing the same work unsubsidised. The employer could argue that he purposely produced one extra job that he couldn't have without the subsidy.

Whether the opportunities would or wouldn't exist without subsidy will only become evident after the subsidy runs out. Hopefully, by then, at least some of those employed will have proved themselves to be worth it.

"The case for legalising all drugs is unanswerable"

This is the first thing I read today and is probably the best thing I will read today. The title is a challenge. Those who want to keep on with prohibition should state their case as clearly and succinctly. But has anyone ever read such a treatise? Does one exist? It seems to me that prohibition continues largely because changing deep-seated but irrational convictions is just too hard.

A decade or so ago, it could be argued that the evidence was not yet in on drugs. No one has ever believed illegal drug use could be eliminated, but there was a defensible view that prohibition could prevent more harm than it caused. Drug use is not a private act without consequences for others; even when legal, it incurs medical and other costs to society. A society that adopted an attitude of laissez-faire towards the drug habits of its citizens could find itself with higher numbers of users. There could be a risk of social abandonment, with those in poor communities being left to their fates.

These dangers have not disappeared, but the fact is that the costs of drug prohibition now far outweigh any possible benefits the policy may bring. It is time for a radical shift in policy. Full-scale legalisation, with the state intervening chiefly to regulate quality and provide education on the risks of drug use and care for those who have problems with the drugs they use, should now shape the agenda of drug law reform.

Is anywhere safe from naggers?

Has anybody else noticed the public address messages now being broadcast when they are super marketing? There I am in, aisle whatever, just enjoying a trip down memory lane listening to some schmlatzy Whitney Houston number wafting through the speakers and in crashes Woolworths Marketing Manager advising me how many women are dying from cervical cancer and how important it is to have a regular smear test. Oh, I groan. For god sakes, is nowhere safe from these naggers. It's a gross invasion of my consciousness. Like NotPC last week, I am up to here with it. Leave me the hell alone.

And just as private charities are now thinly disguised government agents, so are private enterprises that buy into public health indoctrination.

I think I am going to change my shopping habits. But I am assuming that Progressive Enterprises has the same policy across their chain. Anybody been assaulted at a Pak'n'Save lately?

Maori "identity interventions" challenged

Another study from David Fergusson et al., based on the Christchurch birth cohort of 1,265 was published in Social Policy, recently posted on-line.

It addresses the role of Maori ethnicity in childhood maltreatment. The finding that Maori children were not at greater risk of sexual abuse didn't surprise me, although the author states it is in contrast to common assumptions and other research findings. I seem to recall CYF statistics I requested under the OIA confirm Fergusson's findings.

In the area of experiencing serious and severe physical punishment and exposure to parental violence however Maori had higher rates.

Fergusson then went on to break down the Maori group into sole Maori and Maori and other. What he found here is very interesting. First is a summary of one current approach to tackling Maori over-representation in child physical maltreatment;

A third framework, focusing on the role of cultural identity has, over the preceding two decades, been the dominant explanation employed to account for the ethnic asymmetry in child maltreatment rates in New Zealand (Balzer et al. 1997, Keddell 2007, Kiro 2000, Ministry of Social Development 2006, Pihama et al. 2003, Stanley 2000, Stanley and Thompson 1999). This view proposes that it is the degree of association that Māori families have with Māori kin groupings and the level of commitment they show to traditional customary practices that will influence the likelihood of Māori children experiencing maltreatment. From this perspective, strength of Māori identity in families is a protective factor for child abuse, and a lesser identification with Māori cultural domains may increase the risk of children being exposed to maltreatment. Intervention guidelines for child abuse have therefore been specifically developed for Māori, by Māori (Kruger et al. 2004, Stanley 2000, Stanley and Thompson 1999). These focus on determining the levels of affiliation Māori families have to cultural domains and the strength of cultural identity of individuals who reside in the family. Reattachment of Māori families to cultural domains and customs has therefore become a key feature of current child abuse intervention efforts.


Then comes Fergusson's findings and the implications;



The results suggest that sole Māori identity may be a risk factor for exposure to physical child abuse and inter-parental violence....These findings do pose a challenge to current policies aimed at reducing the over-representation of Māori children in rates of child maltreatment, which emphasise “identity interventions” that are not evidence-based and are largely ideologically driven. Even though such policies are no doubt well intentioned and observe statutory requirements unique to the New Zealand context, following the view expounded by UNICEF (2003, 2007), they must be exposed to ongoing critical scrutiny and empirical evaluation.

A surprising invitation

Surprise, surprise, I have been invited to attend this child poverty summit next week.

Surprise because generally, the views of Every Child Counts and mine would clash. But let's see. I'm keeping an open mind.

Every Child Counts, a coalition of non-government agencies that includes Barnardos, Unicef, Plunket and Save the Children, estimates that of the 60,000 children born in New Zealand this year, 10,000 would be born into in poverty.

That'd be right. Around 3,000 to mothers who have no form of support even while pregnant and relying on the sickness benefit.

6,000 to mothers aged 28 or less granted their first DPB before the child was 12 months old.

5,000 babies added to an existing benefit.

But this is normal behaviour. It goes on outside of a recession. There are probably valid reasons for it increasing during a recession. Unemployed men are more dependent on their DPB-incomed partners and more babies equals more income. Job opportunities are fewer for females and motherhood is a viable alternative.

Of course what worries me is the summit will be looking for greater transfer of wealth so the needy have more money in their pockets. Whereas my view is always that the more bad decisions and behaviours are rewarded, the more they happen.

What about a transfer of wealth framed differently? If more of the babies being 'born into poverty' were (openly) adopted out to parents with the means to raise them, the desired wealth-sharing would still be achieved. Be it would be achieved voluntarily and quite possibly, with better outcomes for all parties.

Rather than spending more on benefits why not reward people for not having more babies. Give them a bonus for turning up for their long-acting contraceptive injection. It wouldn't be a difficult scheme to implement.

What about paying some attention to those industries where there is demand, like aged and childcare? Surely there is an opportunity to match some of the DPB population with that demand.

With those sorts of ideas I will probably be a fish out of water, a whale out of water even, but that's OK. There are those who agree with me and someone needs to take their ideas to the table as well.